User talk:Theirishpianist

Welcome

Theirishpianist, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these!

• Wikinews:Neutral point of view - tell every side to a story in a fair and balanced way
• Wikinews:Cite sources - everything in a Wikinews article must be sourced

Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews:

• Wikinews:Introduction - overview of the site
• Wikinews:Writing an article - how to write and publish a complete article
• Wikinews:Content guide - what's suitable for Wikinews
• Wikinews:Contents - the contents page.

There are always things to do on Wikinews:

• Existing articles need expanding and checking for spelling and mistakes
• The front page lead articles often need updating
• Developing stories need finishing and publishing
• Discussions need your input
• If you're interested in audio recordings, Audio Wikinews could always use more contributers
• And of course, stories need writing!

By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! — Doldrums(talk) 17:46, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

You're doing some excellent work so far. It's good to see some users coming over that will actually do some work in the Mainspace, instead of ediing thier talk page once, and leaving. Please keep up the impecable work! --Thunderhead - (talk) 01:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

NBA article

hi, to begin wth, i appreciate the articles u've contributed to Wikinews and look forward to more of the same.

reg. the lead-in line i removed, i'm sorry if the edit appeared a little abrupt. the line i removed is not really way out-of-line, and u wld've no doubt seen similar statements in many other sports news articles elsewhere. the trouble with such a line on Wikinews is that we have a guideline (see WN:NPOV and WN:NOT) that contributors do not add opinions/comments or editorial views on the news events in articles. i guess we're much more stringent on this than the typical news media, the big reason for that is: regular news organisation have a chosen set of journalists who write articles and an editorial process to review such opinion. on Wikinews however, anyone can contribute and there is as of now no formal editorial process - there's no Editor who's word is final, all editorial disputes are to be resolved by discussion and consensus. if comments are permitted, the fear is that they will be difficult to keep "in trim", writing will "degenerate" into a usenet flame-fest - something we'd rather avoid.

the lines in the sand to mind are - no contributors opinion/comment, no characterisation of others' actions (this was the problem with the line i removed ), no speculation or original analysis (eg. He did so because... ). these rules do impose constraints, but we feel they are a necessary evil.  — Doldrums(talk) 07:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Columbine High School evacuated following bomb scare

Please do not remove sourced information from articles unless you have sources otherwise that say the information is not correct. DragonFire1024 19:46, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see sheriff's quote: Most of the threats that have been associated to that school made reference to past events that occurred there [in the past]. DragonFire1024 19:57, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I have read it...several times...and its the same...there is nothing to say that these threats are or are not in regards to past events if there is nothing to back it up. In this case, she says that the threats were of past events. We cannot put into context what these news threats might be in relation to, when we have a direct quote. That is called specualtion and is not backed up by any sources listed in the article or not. DragonFire1024 20:01, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

great work

good work with those templates they look great - keep it up!!--Markie 22:09, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Lead article

Hi,

thank you for updating the lead article. It's important to have a good lead story on our website. Everyone should update it when they think it is appropriate.

However, the first rule about the Lead Article is that "Lead articles should be of international interest". US basketball does not qualify, in my humble opinion. It always a good idea to be modest about your own stories: in the beginning I was reluctant to put stories I started up as lead stories, although in my eyes they were the most important ones (or else I wouldn't have written them).

Anyways just a little advice, it's no big deal. Looks like you have a lot of plans to cover sports over here, you're most welcome because we lacked good sports writers until now. If I can help you in any way, don't hesitate to ask!

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 13:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Tournament articles

These tournament things you're doing look good, but I don't know how we're going to incorporate them. This is obviously something for the sports portal or appropriate sub-portal, but you might want to ask on the Water Cooler how best to incorporate the material. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:45, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Minor Changes

Hiya, would you mind marking these minor edits to NCAA Basketball: Championship week continues through Sunday‎ as "Minor Edits" so we can filter them, since they are taking up most of the space on RC? --Thunderhead - (talk) 02:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem, I've made that mistake many times before. Thanks for the help. --Thunderhead - (talk) 02:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

As another sports person...

As another sports person can you fill in user Jwjoffrion on how to put together an article, he seems to be having trouble with the sources. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:17, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Portal renaming

I've renamed to Portal:NCAA since "March Madness" is not very specific, neutral or compatible with our style guide.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:35, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Sports Writer

As one of our chief sports writers I nominate you to bug all the other people writing sports articles to get together on Portal:Sports and make the rest of the wiki ashamed of their contributions.

No seriously, you're doing a great job - someone (hint, hint) needs to make a sports-specific barnstar and award you it. (Thunderhead are you reading this bit about the barnstar?).

At this moment in time we have 4 or 5 people contributing sports articles, they each have their favoured sport and they all seem to be interested in maintaining match results and league position tables. Having done similar work on the wiki I know that this saps your enthusiasm over time, you need other people encouraging you to keep going. So... Get in touch with the other sports writers, your enthusiasm for a sport is probably just the first thing you share in common, and if you build a community around the sports portal doing good coverage I don't care if 70% of our articles are sport, it just sets a challenge for those covering other topics. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:02, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Project Sports

I think you need a project page for sports, how about Wikinews:Sports coverage? With a little help from a few other admins we can probably set that up for you and pester all the other people contributing on sports to take a look and write about what they're covering. Having a central place to discuss what you're contributing will allow you to plan how the portal Sports is put together. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

{{issues/basketball}}

I made an issues template for basketball you can use if you like — {{issues/basketball}} (note accepts one argument — dir which defaults to right.) See template:issues for more information. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Sports Collaborations

Hey there buddy, i noticed you signed Brian's Sports coverage page, and i'm interested in seeing any ideas you have for the Sports portal. I work on football (soccer), and if you'd like to take a look at the portal (Portal:Football), it might give you some ideas. Anyways, i'm just trying to get a start on this sports thing, hope to hear from you. Good work on your basketball articles by the way.—Dark Squall 02:18, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Dark Squall

User Dark Squall is nominated for adminship, see WN:A. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Re: SportsBot

SportsBot is written in Perl. The source is available at http://fisheye.ts.wikimedia.org/browse/Zach/sportsbot if you want to see how I wrote mine. —Zachary ^talk 17:22, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I can add to sportsbot if you email your additions to zach@ts.wikimedia.org. I'll try to get it up and running as soon as I get it. Thanks! —Zachary ^talk 19:59, 8 January 2008 (UTC)